Sing me one last song
by Howlinchickhowl
Summary: Maybe there was no reason to hold back anymore. Maybe there never was. Based loosely on a short story by Oscar Wilde called The Nightingale and the Rose
1. Chapter 1

_"She said that she would dance with me if I brought her red roses,"__cried the young Student; "but in __all my__ garden there is no red__rose."__From her nest in the __holm__-oak tree the Nightingale heard him, and__she looked out through the leaves, and wondered.__"No red rose in __all my__ garden!" he cried, and his beautiful eyes__filled with tears. "Ah, on what little things does happiness__depend!__ I have read all that the wise men have written, and all__the secrets of philosophy are mine, yet for want of a red rose is__my life made wretched."__"Here at last is a true lover," said the Nightingale. "Night after__night have I sung of him, though I knew him not: night after night__have I told his story to the stars, and now I see __him.__ His hair is__dark as the hyacinth-blossom, and his lips are red as the rose of__his desire; but passion has made his face like pale ivory, and__sorrow has set her seal upon his brow."_

He lay awake in bed. Late afternoon sun drifted in shafts through the cracks in the blinds. He liked to watch the dust floating around in the concentrated light, it reminded him of church. Of Sunday mornings and navy ties that were tied too tight, because apparently looking smart went hand in hand with cutting off your oxygen supply.

It reminded him of wasted time and boring sermons and adults all standing around looking bored, but attempting to look inspired. It reminded him of when he was ten years old, one day when his mother had had a cold and he'd been taken to church by aunt Marjorie, and instead of letting him sit and write in his notebook like his mother always did Aunt Marjorie had held his hand and made him listen to the priest.

He couldn't remember most of specific details of the day, it was a long time ago after all. But at the end of it all Father Bailey had made the cross with his hands and said the same thing he always said.

"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, amen"

"Amen" the congregation repeated, as they always did, and he had always said it too. But today he was interested in other things. He was tugging on Aunt Marjorie's arm, and she was trying to ignore him, Father Bailey was reading from his book of psalms and Aunt Marjorie loved the psalms, but he needed to know. He just had to.

"Aunt Marjorie!" It was only a whisper, but he was hoping that it held enough of a threat of increasing volume to get her to pay attention to him. He was right.

"What is it Gil? I'm trying to listen."

"Aunt Marjorie, is there really a Holy Ghost?"

Aunt Marjorie looked at him as if he'd gone quite mad, much in the way that adults did when he asked questions. Apart from his mother, she never looked at him that way, nor did Dr Herbert, his science teacher at school, Dr Herbert would always answer his questions, or at least try to. But most adults just tended to think he was a little off his rocker. He didn't mind though, as long as he got answers.

"Of course there's a Holy Ghost Gil, why?"

"Well where is he?"

"What?"

"Is he in the church? Or does he fly around the world visiting all the churches?" It had never occurred to him as a child that the Holy Ghost may not have been male. In fact, it only just occurred to him now that the spirit probably didn't have any kind of assigned gender. But he forgave his ten year old self for being so thoughtless.

Aunt Marjorie was putting on that face, that face that meant she was trying to come up with an answer to satisfy him, even though she had no real idea what she was supposed to say.

"He's all around us Gil. Not just in church. All the time. Now be a good boy and keep quiet, ok?"

He nodded and let go her arm. He spent the rest of the service looking all around the church, up in the ceiling, toward the back wall, to see if he could find the Holy Ghost.

Aunt Marjorie said that he was all around, all the time, so he obviously couldn't be one single thing, it has to be something small, with lots of parts, something that's everywhere. And then he saw it. A great big shaft of sunlight was beaming in through the broken window on the East wall and was cutting right across onto Lucy Moran who was in his English class and whose mother was friends with his mother.

In that shaft of sunlight he could see it, hundreds of tiny little floating specks of dust, flowing around each other, and around everyone else. The Holy Ghost.

And even now, as he watches the dust fly through the air in the warmth of his bedroom, forty years since that day in church, he doesn't really think it was such an absurd idea.

* * *

Sara was distracted, he could tell. She kept running her hands through her hair and scratching her head. One minute she'd be leaning forward, head resting on her wrists, the next she'd sit up straight and look away as if she'd seen someone she knew, or was hoping to. Then she'd look back at him and smile and try to look relaxed, but he could tell by the way that she was fingering the peppershaker that she was anything but.

"Sara," the thing was, it amused him. He was always the one rattled. Always the one speechless and often without an idea in his mind of what to say to her, and she was nervous. Downright made him chuckle. "Sara." She heard him the second time.

"Mmm?" She seemed surprised that he was still there. He had to smile.

"You're fidgeting. Are you uncomfortable?"

"No! No not at all!" But her answer came too quickly, too enthusiastically to be believed, and she knew it. She smiled again, properly this time, a little embarrassed. She ducked her head and ran her hand through her hair once more. "I guess I just don't understand why we're here, is all."

Grissom nodded and slightly pursed his lips.

"Well I guess that all depends on your viewpoint. Some people believe that our existence is a divine destiny, a creation of God, or of some purposive energy. Others say that the greatest meaning of life is to share love. From a scientist's point of view I would say that we are here merely to procreate and ensure the survival of the species. But then you would have to consider wh-" He stopped when he looked at her face.

Sara Sidle was now looking at him with a mixture of irritation and contempt. He was sure that that would not work out well for him with what he had planned.

"What?"

Sara rolled her eyes.

"I meant _here_Grissom. As in here. At this table. In this restaurant which is, by the way, nowhere near work and pretty far from either of our homes. You picked this restaurant, and then you asked me to it without any explanation and I came along in anticipation of that explanation. But so far it's not forthcoming. You seem perfectly content to sit there and talk about the meaning of existence when you haven't actually properly spoken to me in what seems like a fair while and I don't understand why."

Finally allowing herself to breathe Sara sat back in her chair, taking a glass of water with her and pretty much gulping down its contents. Then she met his eyes again. He looked amused. She felt angry.

"Oh well that's great. You just sit there and laugh at me, I'll sit here and fume and then we can both go home and forget all about this horrible moment."

"Sara, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to laugh, I'm not laughing. It's just, you always say how you over-talk around me and I can't say that I ever really noticed before, but, yeah, you just don't come up for air do you?"

"Grissom would you please just answer my question?"

He wasn't ready for it. He didn't know what he wanted to say, or how to phrase it, or where to look or how to look. He simply wasn't ready. But her earlier nervousness had been replaced by weariness and he could tell her patience was running out. So he nodded. Poured himself some water and took a sip. And then started, for lack of a better place, at the beginning.


	2. Chapter 2

_"The Prince gives a ball to-morrow night," murmured the young__Student, "and my love will be of the company. If I bring her a red__rose she will dance with me till dawn. If I bring her a red rose,__I shall hold her in my arms, and she will lean her head upon my__shoulder, and her hand will be clasped in mine. But there is no__red rose in my garden, so I shall sit lonely, and she will pass me__by. She will have no heed of me, and my heart will break."_

Emily Vane was not someone who was easily ignored. She was beautiful. She was talented. She was popular. And, of course, like most people in possession of those particular traits, she was loud. _Loud _loud. Like the third cycle on your alarm clock that simply would not go away, no matter how hard you tried to convince yourself that it was just part of your dream it would just keep persisting until you acknowledged it and were wrenched away from the pleasant mist of dreams and into the waking world.

That's what it was like to be around Emily Vane, Gil observed one day during the 4th period chem class they shared together. He could spend most of his day wandering around campus, lost in his own thoughts or engrossed in some book, words and ideas swirling around his head. He would never notice anyone or anything and sometimes it really was like dreaming. Until chemistry.

And then there she was. Her slightly too high, and much too loud voice cutting through into his reverie and pulling him back into the real world. She made it impossible to escape. He found it infuriating.

Or at least, he'd thought he had. But more and more recently, he'd found himself actually paying attention to what she was saying, instead of just huffing impatiently and trying to blot her out, and much to his eternal regret, he'd come to find her quite amusing. She was obviously not the smartest person in the world, but the girl had a good head on her shoulders and she actually made some pretty good jokes. Jokes that Gil couldn't help but snigger at occasionally.

And then one afternoon she had made a joke, and he had had to chuckle, even though he couldn't tell you now what it was that made him laugh so much. And she had heard. Her head spun round and she fixed her eyes on his and all the breath left him for a moment as she smiled at him. A small smile, barely a smile really, more a sideways grin, a recognition of shared amusement. But it was there. And then it was gone. And suddenly Gil found himself looking forward to 4th period chem.

Over the next few weeks she smiled at him more and more during chemistry. She started to involve him in their discussions, she asked him questions and she listened to his answers. She would wave at him as he passed her in the hallways, and the near-transparent figure that had been the ghost of Gil Grissom began to take solid form.

_"Here indeed is the true lover," said the Nightingale. "What I__sing of, he suffers--what is joy to me, to him is pain. Surely__Love is a wonderful thing. It is more precious than emeralds, and__dearer than fine opals. Pearls and pomegranates cannot buy it, nor__is it set forth in the marketplace. It may not be purchased of the__merchants, nor can it be weighed out in the balance for gold."_

He was too hot. The air conditioning fan above his head mocked him with its constant whirring. It was doing no good. There was sweat pooling in every crevice; in the bend of his knee, the creases in his neck where his skin had loosened slightly with age, between his fingers, between his toes. He was boiling alive in his own sweat.

He knew he ought to get up and shower, but he couldn't bring himself to move. He couldn't even bring himself to untangle his right foot from the knot of sheet that it had worked its way into. He just stayed there, watching the dust and remembering.

He'd always thought that it would be something big that would change his mind. Some kind of _event_that would make him suddenly come to his senses. But lately he's been coming to realise that it's usually very small and seemingly insignificant moments in life that change everything.

_"The musicians will sit in their gallery," said the young Student,__"and play upon their stringed instruments, and my love will dance__to the sound of the harp and the violin. She will dance so lightly__that her feet will not touch the floor, and the courtiers in their__gay dresses will throng round her. But with me she will not dance,__for I have no red rose to give her"; and he flung himself down on__the grass, and buried his face in his hands, and wept._

"It started about two weeks ago really," he said, pausing again to take another sip of water and wipe his palms, which were growing steadily slicker, "you were in the garage taking apart that Ford Capri from the Wilson case and you had just banged your head. You were swearing something rotten. Do you remember it?"

"Of course I remember it Grissom, I still have the bump on my head. Damn that hurt." Almost unconsciously it seemed, she reached back to rub her head, and her face took on a perturbed expression exactly like the one she'd had that day. Funny how the brain repeats itself in memories.

"Well, yeah, you bumped your head and swore quite a lot, and-"

"And you laughed at me! Yeah I was there, and don't think I've forgotten your need to be punished."

He chuckled again, which earned him a Sidle death glare and he decided that it was time to get back onto the subject. _The_ subject. Oh dear. Grateful for the reprieve, however short, from his incredibly daunting task, Grissom once more drew in all of his breath and dived once more into the breach.

"I'm sorry. But it was funny, you have such a foul mouth sometimes. And you had this grumpy look on your face and dirt on your nose, and, well, I couldn't help but just think about how much I'm just in love with you."


End file.
